Mayfield Dairy- Athens, TN.

http://www.mayfielddairy.com/




Check out Mayfield Dairy!  We stopped by on our way to Chattanooga (its between Knoxville and Chattanooga).  It is easily worth a stop on your Tennessee road trip!

Mayfield Dairy has a GREAT visitor center, and they do a tour on the hour.

The tour included a short film on the history of the company, and then they take you around to see the bottling process of their milk.  You actually got to see the yellow jugs being molded, milk going in to the bottles, labels added, etc.

Our tour guide said that they do take people to see the ice cream production area, but they can't at the moment.  They plan to take people to that area on the tour again soon.

They do not allow photography in the bottling area.  I hope they change that sometime because the bottling process is very interesting and its a fun thing to photograph!  See my photos from the Ale-8 factory.  Still, it is very cool of Mayfield Dairy to allow people to go through the plant for FREE!

AND, they do have some other great photo op areas.  There is a small museum area showing various bottles and packaging they have used over the years.  There is a life sized cow you can milk too!

They have an area in the gift shop where you can buy some of their ice cream after the tour!  Don't fool yourself, you will want some!

I have to mention their gift shop too.  Shirts, toys and other cool items were very reasonably priced, and they looked great!  A nice t-shirt (not a thin cheap one) could be purchased for just $13!  Who wouldn't love a Mayfield Dairy cow logo t-shirt?  Don't tell my dad, but I got one for him!

They had postcards and a penny smashing machine too (I love those).  I think a "Mold-A-Rama" machine would be GREAT here!  Think about it- you get to watch bottles being molded on the tour- taking home a molded Mold-A-Rama mini bottle or mini Mayfield Dairy cow would be perfect!  Yellow would be the only needed color.  Think about it Mayfield Dairy!

Then again, Mayfield Dairy is a pretty straight forward, "here's what we do" kind of place.  They do their work, make a good product and give tours.  Being too touristy might take the charm away from the place.
The company has been around since the 1920s!  Taking the tour, you could tell that they care about the quality of the product (some machines are taken apart and cleaned daily).  Plus, the fact that they let anyone come in and see how they do things says a lot about the company!  You see that the workers are observant, you see that the floor and machines are clean, you see how their quality control works.  You feel very comfortable eating and drinking their product after the tour!